Whatever Happened To Ambient?

maybe surprising to get to no.1 but not surprising that it was popular because it sounds pretty I suppose.

isn't ambient still quite popular in the 'chill-out' form?

Yes but Chill Out now is things like Royskopp which Alix was playing v.loud when I got in and just sounded like duffo lounge jazz with 'abstract beats' or something.

Haha "UFOrb" itself has just got going and it is microhouse! Rumbled!

i thought chill-out was some nice melodies with washes of ambient to make it 'modern'. there are ads for this stuff on the telly. on one they played a snip off Beethoven's 9th and what they 'did'. i wasn't rushing out to buy it.

heh...lounge jazz with abstract beats. that's a good one (as long as i don't listen to it of course).

Whatever Happened To Ambient?

it's all around you.

UFOrb going #1 makes me wish I lived in England -- nothing like that could happen in the States! (Closest we came was probably Tubular Bells in the '70s.) I don't really have a feel for what ambient meant to people over there but yes it does seem odd that it got so huge.

If you go to garden centres they have some kind of machine which plays CDs of animal noises and waterfalls and stuff over a gentle musical background. You can buy the CDs. I think this is what happened to Ambient.

''If you go to garden centres they have some kind of machine which plays CDs of animal noises and waterfalls and stuff over a gentle musical background. You can buy the CDs.''

wasn't this sort of thing ambient in the first place.

Fair point.

Preseumably one of the reasons UFOrb was so big is there was little music of that type available then, especially in handy album format. If it was released now it'dbe lost in amongst all the other simialr stuff like recent Orb albums.

The splintering of dance music meant that not only were there separate dancefloor stories to tell, but that there were different comedown stories to tell - the fast music that U.F.Orb was an alternative to ceased to be a monolith after '92, and maybe stay-at-home dance music followed suit.

Also maybe trip-hop played a big role here - at least in being the first music that an enormous amount of dance fans embraced in a big way that was totally outside the scene. This is what has led to "chill-out" becoming so vague and amorphous that both full-on house tracks and rock bands get a look-in; in fact the 'Back To Mine' and 'Another Late Night' franchises seem to now be in competition to be the least dance-related and the least relaxed.

Oddly, Orb-style ambient-dub is one stripe of chill-out music that might actually sound quite weird being played in a cafe/bar.

Tim's right -- before the whole culture sprouted into vaious by-roads the word ambient was a one catch phrase that indie rock fans could latch onto and in 1993 they stared switching allegiances in droves. Up to then dance music was just a weekend thing but no albums were in collections until Aphex and Orb became Melody Maker regulars. The Megadog nights plus the Trance Gruope Express & Artificial Intelligence compilations also intensified the migration to dance culture for a lot of shoegaze and grunge heads. By 1994/5 however, ambient was once again in the realm of the specialists. Bit of a generalisation I know!!

perhaps The Orb enjoyed an unusual blast of crossover success because so many different types had something to latch onto...i expect they attracted many indie and Primal Scream fans after 'screamadelica' came out, the ravers were down with it for obvious reasons, as were the crusty Levellers fans, they wouldve been a nice timely discovery for middle class pot-smoking students who were bored of Pink Floyd and The Doors...and i expect several broadsheets and magazines were running pieces mentioning 'dinner party' and 'coffee table' prompting yuppie types to snap it up on a whim as well. along with all this, Alex Paterson actually did seem quite interested in presenting an alternative approach in fusing acid house with dub with Brian Eno in an elegant yet powerful fashion whilst retaining some populist element - similar to the KLF in this respect...except The Orb backed up the old 'stadium house' concept by playing lengthy tours and huge shows, garnering big U.S. support in the process

there's no opportunity for this these days sadly it seems but the likes of Royksopp and Boards Of Canada are making some great music that owes a lot to The Orb i'd say

Tom, I think you set the question in a timeframe already too far down the line. Whatever Happened To Ambient? Well, it got fucked over – and it started happening years before The Orb came thudding along.

1st - at some point in the mid 80's some bloody shower re-marketed the late 70's/early 80’s 'ambient' of Eno et al as a sub-section of the cringe-inducing 'New Age' genre. It thus rubbed shoulders with dubious company as part of a bizarre reclassification of a wide range of existing artists and music – anything from Tangerine Dream to Penguin Café Orchestra to ‘ethnic’ to meditative/mystical noodlings were included - a move which always struck me as part of an LP => CD back-catalogue revenue-generating ploy. In this context it was used as a more user-friendly ‘soothing’ music, slow tempos, no dissonances, usually more melodic than the early stuff: tinkly, chimey, wooden-flutey…….Ambient had always been a sitting target for the hippy-ish, now it started getting invaded by them.

2nd – early 90’s it was picked up by the neo-hippies (ravers) as a soundtrack to their post-drug chillout rooms. The fundamental arsery committed by the hamfisted thudmongers was to make Ambient, like everything else they laid their sticky paws on, a slave to their rhythm. (The presence of any regular percussion element, even a tonally-muffled or quiet one, always seemed misplaced to me, and the increased tempos made it more ‘easy listening’ than ‘ambient’.)
The revisionist ‘roots of…’ compilations of the early nineties that followed this back-room club culture reminded me of the ‘New Age’ value-added reseller exercises.

3rd – due to being picked up by all sorts, it became a cross-breeding mongrel of a genre. Now it’s always involved in some kind of dirty little coupling - you hardly even see it on its own anymore. It’s always ‘ambient-this’ or ‘ambient-that’ – ‘Ambient Techno’, Ambient House’,‘Ambient Industrial’, ‘Dark Ambient’, ‘Ambient Noise’, blah blah ambient blah.
It’s been reduced into a ‘modifier’ or ‘enhancer’, added to other styles but with no clear flavour of its own anymore - a musical monosodium glutamate.

Whatever happened to Ambient?
It started as a strangely melancholic and gentle thing with a thoughtfully ambiguous relationship to listening – it became a social-situation soundtrack for the satiated, with a promiscuous relationship to hearing.

‘Ambient’ – the music you can eat between meals (maaaaan)

That's a very interesting perspective Ray but I wouldn't suggest it was a decline. I heard Eno's Ambient stuff and The Orb for the first time at pretty much the same time (and before I'd ever touched a drug or gone to a rave) - and The Orb struck me as much better: funnier, more imaginative, rewarding at any level of listening, and just plain more *useful*. This is why I like 'furniture music' as opposed to 'ambient music' - it emphasises the use-value of the music, which your post seems to have a mild horror of (a "social situation soundtrack for the satiated" - how beastly!). (Most of the rhythmic stuff was always called 'Ambient House' anyway and the H-word gives the game away as to what you're going to be getting)

I do agree that it became a buzzword but most of the genre-hybrids you mention was fairly descriptive - 'dark ambient' records certainly existed and a lot of the time turned their back on rhythm in the music. I also agree that the lumping together of Eno, T.Dream, Penguin Cafe etc etc was odd and misplaced but such recontextualising affects existing music only if you let it.

It's true Tom, I am fundamentally anti-social-'use' of certain musics, and overly sensitive to context :@

I had a different form of 'use' in mind in that last paragraph but I couldn't find a way to articulate it - something to do with isolation and solitude and reflecting (but without getting all spiritual about it), rather than it being a cool/friendly/sociable relaxation vibe.
It did feel odd to feel that these transformations took place - and I do react badly to those.
'funnier' - jeez yeah I bet they were, but it was never a concept I'd even think was appropriateto apply to my earlier encounters with Ambient! It just wouldn't fit with the mindset.

As usual with these threads though - after venting my stored bile I read a reasoned response and end up feeling 'well, maybe I'd better try and listen again'......

(Mind you, I'd *never* use a word like 'beastly' - 'what a load of shite' is more my level)

Tom, I'd say that "ambient" still suggests a use (e.g. "the room's gently foreboding ambience" etc.), albeit a more open-ended one? It's about flavoring a room/social gathering/activity/drug adventure without dominating it.

regading dance music, the ambient prefix was useful in order to define what dance tracks suggested they'd been inspired by something other than just the dancefloor, 'pacific state' and the orb's groovier stuff being fine examples - i suppose the term occurred when the tunes were not purely driven by beats and basslines but more ethereal sounds...tho something like Fingers Inc 'Can U Feel It' seems the archetypal 'furniture' track and has very low production values reliant as it is on a beat and analogue bassline but with warm synths drifting in gently throughout to set more of a scene in time

it's mr fingers, blueski, said the pedant. ambient dance music to me was more anglo-centric. plenty of early house tunes had warm pads and strings but were just that - house (see: 'your love', 'tears', 'open our eyes'). when ambient became a 'buzz' term and, thus, a compilation seller, deep house/techno cuts such as rhythim is rhythim's 'kao-tic harmony' were re-classified as ambient. as is usually the case, the music is still being made but it's just being marketed differently.

so which larry heard tracks were as FIngers Inc and which were as Mr Fingers?

Fingers Inc. = mainstream vocal stuff; Mr. Fingers = deep stuff like "Can You Feel It?", "Washing Machine" etc.

Royksopp-The most misunderstood band on the planet. (still not fantastic but because they're brilliant remixers I don't want to mock them too much)

Fingers Inc. = mainstream vocal stuff; Mr. Fingers = deep stuff like "Can You Feel It?", "Washing Machine" etc.

i don't think it's as straightforward as that. his mainly vocal soul album 'introduction' (including my fave larry heard track 'what about this love?') was under the name mr fingers. his earliest stuff was as mr fingers, then he 'another side' came out under the fingers inc. title, then he adopted the mr. again. contrary bugger.

does Washing Machine = "deep stuff"?
I thought deep house was like soul house. ???

"does Washing Machine = "deep stuff"?
I thought deep house was like soul house. ???"

Keith we're talking these genres ten/fifteen years ago. Since then deep house - an even woozier counterpart to yer already-tracky J.M. Silk's et. al - has gotten more soulful as real-instrument-fetish has invaded.

Conversely, "soul house" (which was initially gospel house and NY garage basically) has gotten "trackier" as a result of improving technology and basic competition between genres to keep sounding fresh.

That said a lot of deep house is still not very soulful (and vice versa) - quite a bit of it is so amniotic as to verge on "microhouse", and indeed I frequently see MRI's Rhythmogenesis in the deep house section of music stores.

UFOrb and Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld are two of my most played albums simply because I put them on when I'm having trouble nodding off. They pissed on their chips with Pommes Fritz, though.

Haha "UFOrb" itself has just got going and it is microhouse! Rumbled!

You might have a point, there is the Thomas Fehlmann connection.

duffo lounge jazz with 'abstract beats' or something

You don't have a point here, though, Royksopp are fantastic. Yes Ronan, fantastic.

Royksopp are house I would have said! I don't think they're crap either, not fantastic heh, but still quite good. There's nothnig loungey really about Royksopp, I think wusshouse was the phrase I used before so I guess there may be potential for agreement yet. I've heard about 3 Royksopp remixes and they are among the best remixes I've ever heard by anyone.

"I remember handbag house before it was fannypack house."

"Melody A.M." wasn't really very house-y, and more of a chill out-type album. The remixes Royksopp did are far more energetic and indeed on the house/electrodisco side.

I actually put the whole Royskopp album on to research this and the duffo abstract beat jazz is only one track (near the end). The rest boasts the occasional good noise or sample.

.

[strike]Fingers Inc.[strike] 20 Fingers = mainstream vocal stuff; Mr. Fingers = deep stuff like "Can You Feel It?", "Washing Machine" etc.

I'ma go on strike...

Ambient didn't disappear, it refined itself past human consciousness.

Yes, ambient's still around us, splaying space and time, trimming fat from thought.

Nadja - Touched

fucking great!